


the road now taken looks real good now

by downn_in_flames



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Champagne Problems, Christmas, Evermore - Freeform, F/M, Holidays, but then taylor had the audacity to drop this masterpiece of an album, normally i do jily christmas fluff every year, so now i did jily christmas angst i guess, tis the damn season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28289034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downn_in_flames/pseuds/downn_in_flames
Summary: Your heart was glass, I dropped it.But if it's okay with you, it's okay with me.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 70





	the road now taken looks real good now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maraudertimes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maraudertimes/gifts).



> predictably, there are some very heavy-handed champagne problems and 'tis the damn season references throughout this fic. i also apparently listened to the mashup of champagne problems and all too well one too many times bc there are some random all too well references in here too. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

He parks his car at the back of the church lot, right where it borders the high school. His headlights are still on and the engine is idling, but he's tucked underneath a massive pine tree that blocks any of the streetlight glow from hitting this particular spot. Once the car's off, it'll be practically invisible to anyone who drives by.

That's probably for the best.

He shouldn't be here.

No, really, he definitely shouldn't be here, and he doesn't know why he sent that text message in the first place. This was a mistake. If he had any sense of self-preservation, he'd switch the car into gear again and go back to the warm four-poster bed at his parents' house that the rest of the world thinks he's in right now.

He's interrupted from his fantasy of driving right back out of this parking lot and acting like this never happened by a pair of headlights coming towards him.

* * *

_She can't explain the nerves in her stomach as the train pulls up to the station. Part of it is probably that she hasn't seen him in months and the first time she's doing so is after spending half the night and the entire morning on a sleeper train and she looks like half a wreck because of it, but there's something else too. Something she can't put a finger on._

" _Please collect your belongings and exit the train," the conductor's voice echoes through the train, just as Lily pulls her overnight bag off the luggage rack._

_She files out of the train with all of the other passengers, blinking violently at the sudden onslaught of sunlight. She brings a hand up to shield her eyes, looking around the platform._

_It's never hard to find him - the tall, energetic boy with stars in his eyes. Smiling at her like she's the greatest damn thing he's ever seen._

* * *

Her old truck comes to a stop in front of him, and she rolls her window down.

It's been a long time since he's seen her in person, and the sheer sight of her takes his breath away completely. Her hair's longer now, tied up in a braid that's draped over her left shoulder, but in every other way, she hasn't changed a bit. She's every bit as beautiful as she was when they were eighteen.

He turns his own car off and gets out.

He's thought about this moment so many times over the years - what he'd say to her the first time he saw her again. So many speeches, written out and promptly crumpled and discarded, some angry, some heartbroken, some making peace.

They all escape him now.

"Hi," is what he eventually goes with. It's all he can get out.

"Hi," she responds. Her voice is soft, and somehow it stirs something in him even after all these years apart. "You want to get in?"

As if to help him come up with an answer, a particularly violent gust of icy wind hits him. Her truck is undoubtedly infinitely warmer than standing here in the cold is.

"Sure."

* * *

_James' arms are wrapped around her before she even has a chance to get any sort of greeting out. He smells like coming home, the familiar woody, boyish scent something she's come to associate with comfort and warmth over the years._

_They've texted and FaceTimed constantly for the past four months, but it's not the same. It's not this, it's not the way being physically held by him feels like a perfect cocoon from the outside world._

_It feels like they're back in high school again._

" _I missed you," he says into her hair._

" _I missed you too," she replies, her voice muffled by James' flannel shirt._

_He pulls back from the hug just the tiniest bit, and then he leans down to kiss her._

_Now, she's really home._

* * *

Lily has the heat cranked up as high as it can go inside the truck, and the fog on her windshield from the cold has been relegated to the far edges of the glass. The inside of the car is still cold, but it's a different kind of chill. This one's not caused by the temperature.

James takes his coat off once he's seated on the passenger side, letting it fall to the floor in front of him.

Part of him is dying to turn and look at her, to study the woman he hasn't seen in six years and whose body he once had committed to memory. He wants to find all the ways she's changed, count all the freckles on her cheeks that weren't there before, learn anything he can about this new person who's somehow both achingly familiar and completely foreign to him all at once.

There's holiday music playing through the radio, muted and just a little fuzzy. The radio service in this town has never been all that great, especially if you want halfway decent music.

He should say something.

His tongue feels as if it's made of lead though, so when he opens his mouth to say something, in the hopes that something clever will just magically form itself, nothing comes out.

Eventually, she's the one who breaks the silence.

"This place hasn't changed a bit, has it?"

He shakes his head. "It never does."

* * *

_James hasn't stopped talking since they got in the car. He's a relentless stream of enthusiasm, talking all about the places he's going to show her and the things they're going to do over the weekend._

_Usually, his excitement is contagious, and she can't help but get sucked into the force of him, but for some reason there's something inside of her that's holding her back, even though she_ wants _to be excited with him,_ wants _to feel that same rush he's feeling._

_She's not sure why she can't muster it this time._

" _We're not staying in my dorm, obviously, because that bed is barely big enough for_ me _, much less the both of us, but I still want to show you it anyways," he rambles. "But here's a fun fact that I only discovered earlier this week: apparently it was once a madhouse."_

_She laughs under her breath. "Sounds like it's made for me then."_

_James gives her a look for that out of the corner of his eye. She makes a lot of jokes about her breakdown junior year, and he's one of the only people who can see through to the well-suppressed insecurities driving them._

_He's always been the only person who can tell which smiles she's faking._

" _My parents got an offer on the house," she throws out, in an attempt to change the subject now._

" _That's great," he replies. "Have they gotten fully moved into the new place yet? I know they were saying it's a lot bigger than your old house."_

_She forgets that he's almost as close with her parents as she is. Hell, last time she talked to them they'd let her know that her boyfriend had called them more since going off to college than she had._

" _They're still unpacking boxes - they're both busy with new jobs, and I'm not exactly in a place where it's easy for me to get home to help them out on weekends."_

" _And I assume Petunia hasn't been helpful either?"_

" _Petunia's still pissed off at them for moving in the first place," she answers, rolling her eyes. "So she's refusing to help out of principle."_

_He scoffs. "Classic Petunia."_

" _It's weird, though - home isn't really home anymore, you know? So while I don't really support the whole refusing-to-help-them thing… I get the underlying feeling behind it."_

_She has mixed feelings about their tiny little hometown. She was absolutely ready to escape it as soon as she possibly could and she moved halfway across the country for college to do so, but there's a certain melancholy about never being able to call it home again._

* * *

She pulls out of the parking lot and onto the main road.

"Are you staying at your parents' house?"

"Yeah," he answers. "They've kept my bedroom exactly the same as it was when I lived there. How's the new house?"

It's cheap small talk, but he doesn't know what else they're meant to say right now.

"It's nice. It's only a few blocks up from the one we lived in when we were - when I was in high school."

He notices the way she revises herself, shifts the focus away from their shared time here. It's the elephant in the room between them, and he wonders how long it'll take for one of them to acknowledge it. And what'll happen when they do.

"That must be odd," he replies, then instantly wonders if it was the wrong thing to say.

"It really is," she agrees, and he instantly feels relieved that he didn't fuck things up too early on in the conversation. "I accidentally pulled into my old driveway earlier this week, which was _super_ awkward."

"Have you seen any of our friends since you got back?"

She laughs - it's hollow, which is how he knows he _has_ fucked things up this time. "I don't think you can really call them 'our' friends - they haven't been 'ours' for a long time."

* * *

_James picks up a call from Sirius when they get to the hotel, and he presses the phone to his ear when he talks. Which is out of the ordinary for him; he usually puts his phone on speaker and makes his best friend announce any of his crazy plans to the both of them at once._

_She tries to listen in, to figure out what conversation she's missing out on, but James is replying in hushed tones as well, and she can't make out a word of any of it._

_He hangs up as they're walking into the lobby._

" _What was that about?" she asks, inescapably curious._

_James shrugs, but it's not quite the casual gesture he means for it to be. It's too quick, almost twitchy. "Nothing. Sirius just had questions about the plans for tonight."_

" _I thought it was just the two of us tonight?"_

_He runs his hand through his hair. "I mean, yeah, it is, but he was wanting to see if there was any way we could all meet up afterwards."_

_James has never been great at lying, and something about that answer just seems off._

* * *

It's quiet between them for a long time. He supposes she's right - in the abrupt shattering of their lives, the disentangling of what had been so fully intertwined for so long, he came away with most of it.

He'd never asked any of their friends to pick sides, never given any of them an ultimatum that it was him or Lily, but they joined teams nonetheless. And James ended up with a full roster, while Lily got… well, Lily was gone from their little town at that point, so she didn't get much of anybody.

"I _did_ see Sirius the other day, in the grocery store," she tells him as she turns onto Main Street. "He saw me too, I think, because he immediately went to the opposite side of the shop and I didn't see him again after that."

"Ah, well, Sirius is…" Loyal? Protective? Resentful? "Sirius."

"I mean, it's about what I expected. I wasn't exactly braced for any warm welcomes coming back here."

There's hurt in her voice - hurt that he knows she's trying her best to hide, but some things apparently don't change, and the way Lily tries to mask pain is one of them.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he finds that he genuinely means it. It's not fair that she lost so much.

He sees her shake her head out of the corner of his eye. "You, of all people, have nothing to apologise for."

* * *

_After a long, hot shower, Lily starts to feel like herself again._

_James has promised a nice dinner, so she puts on a dress, tights, and heels, lines her eyes with black and her lips with dark red, curls her hair so that it sits on her shoulders just so._

_When she walks back into the bedroom of their hotel room, James looks over at her from his spot in front of the mirror, also dressed smartly in slacks and a button-up shirt._

" _You look beautiful," he tells her, his face splitting into a grin._

_He does things to her when he looks at her like that._

" _You don't look half bad yourself," she replies, making her way over to him._

_He wraps his arms around her when she gets to him, and she sees them both in the mirror together, the spitting image of a picture-perfect couple._

_They've been together since they were fourteen, since James was a gangly kid with glasses who was just a bit too obsessed with soccer and Lily was the tiny girl who constantly had her nose in a book. Somehow they found each other, and they found themselves in each other._

_Now, James is a college player on a full scholarship, and Lily's got her own full ride studying biochemistry and genetics at an Ivy League school. They both grew into something far more than what was expected of two awkward teenagers in the little town of Godric's Hollow._

_She's proud of them, even if she can't help but wonder if there's something different now that they're outside their sheltered little hometown._

* * *

Main Street is lit up and colorful, just as it is every year. Godric's Hollow goes all out for the holidays, every storefront and restaurant glittering with Christmas lights. Even the trees are filled with sparkling white lights, setting the whole street aglow with holiday spirit.

They used to make this drive together all the time, her hand intertwined with his as they took in the festive atmosphere, obnoxiously singing along to whatever cheesy Christmas music they could get to come through the radio, smiling and laughing and being oh-so-in-love. So much of this town is indelibly stamped with memories of her, memories of _them_. But even though the town itself hasn't changed, the dynamic between the two of them sure has.

He doesn't think they could sit farther apart from one another in this truck if they tried.

For what has to be the hundredth time tonight, he wonders why the fuck he thought this was a good idea. They haven't even looked each other in the eye once since he got in the car.

She comes to a stop at one of the few stoplights in the town, the light flooding the car with a red hue. "It's… so weird, seeing all of this," she says eventually.

"I'm sure," he agrees. "You never thought you'd be back here, did you?"

She shakes her head. "No, I didn't, but… it's not that, not really. It's probably different for you, because you've been back here so many times, but… I can't look at most of these places and not immediately think of you."

* * *

_James opens the passenger door for her when they get back to his car, helping her in before going over to his side. As soon as he backs out of the parking spot, he interlocks his fingers with hers, bringing her hand up to his lips and pressing a kiss against her skin._

_She's not opposed to this level of chivalry, but she's certainly not used to it. She's not sure she can remember a time where James_ ever _opened a car door for her before. Traditional chivalry has never really been his thing; he's usually opted to show his affection in… less conventional ways._

_Usually in ways that result in her laughing and rolling her eyes and muttering to herself that she's not quite sure why she fell in love with this idiot in the first place. (Which is entirely for show - she knows_ exactly _why she fell in love with this idiot.)_

_As they leave the parking lot, she notices something._

" _James, that looks_ exactly _like your parents' car," she says, gesturing to the black BMW. It's an uncanny resemblance, from the bumper sticker to the… "James, I think that_ is _your parents' car."_

_He shakes his head, just a little too quickly. "It can't be."_

" _I'm pretty sure it's the same license plate number and everything."_

" _Huh, that's weird," he replies, "but they're still back in Godric's Hollow. Maybe it's just one of those weird things where a zero looks like an 'O' or something so it seems like the same plate but it's not."_

_She's not sure that's possible, and if so, what are the odds that two identical cars would have almost identical plate numbers as well?_

_Between the Sirius call and this, she's convinced something's going on that she doesn't know about, and she's got no idea what to make of that. She feels distinctly uneasy at all of it, at the thought that there's something going on that he doesn't want her to know about._

" _So where are we going for dinner?" she asks, deciding it's a lost cause to prod any further._

" _You'll see," he replies, his face morphing into a grin. "I think you'll love it."_

* * *

"It's not," he says, almost too quickly. "Different for me, that is. It's… _god_ , I was just thinking the same thing, actually."

This whole town is so steeped in her, in him-and-her, that sometimes he just has to stop and remind himself that all of those moments are long gone and that magic isn't here anymore. The diner is no longer their go-to spot after his soccer games, the big oak tree in the park no longer his favorite place to kiss her, the lookout spot no longer…

"We should go to the lookout," he finds himself saying before he has the chance to think it through.

The lookout: a huge gravel lot just outside of town, so named because it's atop a hill and offers an incredible view of the town below and beyond. The two of them spent a lot of time there, when family or school or life got to be too much and they needed a way to escape from it all.

James hasn't been up there in six years.

He doesn't know why he suddenly wants to go back now.

Or maybe he does, but he's not entertaining the depths of that 'why' right now. He just knows that, in his gut, going there right now makes sense. The cheery Christmas lights of the town are suffocating him, taunting him with their joy that feels so opposite to whatever cocktail of emotions is brewing in this car right now, and he can't handle it anymore.

She flips her turn signal on. "Okay, let's go."

* * *

_He's right, because of course he is. He knows her taste well, and she finds herself overwhelmed by just how many options on the menu make her mouth water._

_When she looks up from the menu, he's looking at her, a soft smile gracing his lips._

" _What?"_

" _Just… I'm really happy you're here. I love you."_

_She melts a little - it helps to chip away at the anxiety in her stomach. "I love you too," she replies._

" _So, you found what you want to eat yet?"_

" _This is the hardest possible decision you could've given me," she answers. "How can I pick just one?"_

_He grins. "You don't have to, you know. We can order more than one thing, split some appetizers - whatever you want."_

_She eyes the prices on the menu - this isn't exactly a college kid budget-friendly sort of restaurant. "James, I - "_

" _This night is my treat," he interrupts. "And I want you to get everything you want. Please."_

_How can she say no to that? When he looks at her with those wide puppy dog eyes of his and asks her to let him give her the world?_

" _Okay."_

* * *

The lookout, predictably, hasn't changed in six years. They're the only car up there, which possibly makes sense given the predictions for snow later tonight, and there's something almost relieving about being up here alone, away from the lights and bustle of the town center.

Looking at Christmas lights like old times had seemed like the perfect activity when he'd texted her originally, but given how quickly Lily jumped at the idea of a complete change of plans, he thinks that maybe both of them realised how poor a choice it was.

On the way up here, they'd exchanged the usual pleasantries and life updates. He tells her about law school and the kids' soccer team he's coaching, and he learns that she's in graduate school for the very same things she studied in undergrad. She also lives less than an hour from him now.

But when they come to a stop at the top of the hill and get their first view of the dark expanse before them, the conversation comes to an abrupt halt.

After a long silence, not even punctuated by fuzzy Christmas music because they're too far away from any radio towers for even a trace of it to come through anymore, Lily speaks.

"When my parents told me they were moving back to Godric's Hollow again this summer, I thought I was going to be sick." Even though she's not driving anymore, her eyes remain steadfastly focused on something in front of them. "It was easier to… I don't know, pretend this part of my life didn't exist anymore when I wasn't running into childhood friends who hate me now in the grocery store and being reminded of our history every time I step outside."

"I don't think they all hate you," James replies, choosing what seems to be the least dangerous segue for this conversation. He also picks something that might be a lie - he hasn't talked to any of them about her in years, but none of them had particularly charitable things to say about her in the immediate aftermath of what happened.

"I broke their best friend's heart, of course they hate me," she says, as if it should be obvious.

There it is - the first acknowledgement of the last time they saw each other. The cloud that's been hanging over them since the moment he climbed into this passenger seat.

"They all told you I was just fucked in the head, I'm sure."

"No one said that." Another lie.

"Yes they did," she insists forcefully.

He relents, because she'd always been able to pick apart his lies, and there's no point protecting her feelings anymore if she already knows it to be true. "Okay, maybe, yeah, but I told them they weren't allowed to talk about you like that."

She sighs. "I get why they said it though. I mean, I'd have to be to do what I did, wouldn't I?"

* * *

_After the plates in front of them have been cleared and James has handed a black credit card to the waitress, he suggests that he take her on a walk around his campus, and she assents._

_It's not quite the same as the ivy-covered centuries-old buildings that she's gotten used to seeing at her own college, but it's beautiful nonetheless. There's a huge fountain in the center of the courtyard that she's sure is stunning during the summer months when there's actually water running through it, and plenty of winding, tree-lined paths that make for a wonderful little stroll in the cold._

_Lily's tucked under James' arm, his body heat doing far more to keep her warm than her coat is._

_It's quiet between the two of them, but Lily can't help but feel like there's something he wants to say but is holding back on. Something about the way he's carrying himself, like he's strung out on nervous energy even as they take a casual walk through his college, makes it feel like there's something more to this, more to him._

" _Is everything okay?" she eventually asks, reaching up to grab the hand currently wrapped around her shoulders._

" _Yeah, of course, why_ wouldn't _everything be okay?" he replies. "I'm finally seeing my girlfriend in person after months of being apart, we just had an incredible dinner, and the weather is perfect."_

_He's not wrong, but he also never feels the need to justify things like that. When he pulls out lists of reasons, there's something off._

" _You're right about all of that," she agrees, keeping her suspicions to herself. She can talk to him later about what's bothering him, or why he's been acting so randomly shady today, but right now… it feels better to just let him (and herself) live in the moment._

" _I'm really happy you're here," he says, for what has to be at least the tenth time since he picked her up from the train station. "It's been weird - going from seeing you almost every day for four years to only seeing you through a screen."_

" _It really has."_

_James has been at the center of her world since he asked her out on that first date when they were fourteen; leaving their small town and leaving him has thrown all of that wildly off balance._

" _Only three and a half more years of this though," he says jokingly, and she's confused about that for a moment before realising that's how long they each have until they graduate. She hadn't even thought about that far into the future. Into their future._

" _Yeah," she replies, faking a little laugh._

_He can't tell it's fake, or else he just doesn't comment on it. "C'mon, I've got to show you the best part."_

_He guides them both down a different path, one that leads into what looks like the campus gardens. There aren't any flowers blooming anymore, but there's still a sort of peaceful serenity and understated beauty about the place._

_There's a large staircase that descends into it, and they walk down it together, Lily paying close attention to where her feet are so that she doesn't roll an ankle in her high heels._

_James stops on the landing, letting his arm fall from her shoulders. She's about to ask what he's doing, but then he grabs both of her hands._

" _Lily, the very first time I saw you, in freshman homeroom, I knew. I looked at you and just thought to myself… that's it. She's the one." He laughs to himself. "Which is probably the only bit of good judgment I had at fourteen."_

_Anxiety rises in her throat, uninvited, like all the little moments throughout the day joining forces to knock her out with their sudden combined strength._

_He's still talking to her, saying nice things, sweet things, incredible things, and somehow she can't hear a word of it. Her vision goes fuzzy around the edges, but she can still see James drop one of her hands and pull a tiny box out of his pocket._

_She vaguely registers the sound of a camera clicking in the distance, and realises for the first time that they're not alone out here. The call with Sirius, his parents' car… it all suddenly clicks into place, and her head spins._

_She can't breathe, can't move, can't think._

_All she knows is that James is on one knee in front of her asking for a 'yes' and that the answer forming on her lips isn't one._

* * *

"Lil, don't say that," he says.

"It was just - it was so much so fast, and we were so young, you know?" She sounds almost like she's trying to convince herself, not him.

He doesn't need to be convinced of it though, not anymore. He knows it was fast and that they were young and she wasn't ready for that step, and if he'd bothered to check in with her before planning out the elaborate thing without even once considering that they'd never actually even discussed marriage before that night, he might've known that, and the entire mess might have been avoided.

He has no proof that him not proposing that night would've meant that they never broke up, but he'll never know what could've happened now. Instead, he just gets to sit here in the hurt of losing the chance to find out.

"I know," he says softly, his eyes dropping to his feet.

He figured that seeing Lily again would be like opening an old wound, but he hadn't expected it to sting quite this much. His feelings for her might've gone dormant for a number of years, and he might've been able to push her from his mind for a while, but they never really went away.

"We've changed a lot since then."

He nods. "Yeah, I think it's safe to say we probably have."

She shifts in her seat, and he turns to look at her. She's looking at him already, so for the first time all night, they lock eyes.

Even in the barely-there light, her green eyes feel like they're tearing him apart.

"You look really good though," she tells him.

His mouth goes dry. "You too," is what he manages to get out, even though the full truth is that she always has been and continues to be the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.

He doesn't think he can say that to her though. Not anymore.

* * *

_Somehow, the next thing she knows, she's sitting on yet another passenger train, her knees tucked up against her chest as her whole body shakes with silent sobs._

_She can't remember what happened between the moment James proposed and now, as if the entire sequence of events has been placed in a black box, wiped entirely from her memory._

_Maybe that's for the best; if she had any proper memory of it, she'd probably be crying even harder right now._

_A few passengers walking by her empty row give her pitying looks, and she feels incredibly undeserving of them. If any of those people knew the truth, knew what she'd just done, she's pretty sure they wouldn't pity her much anymore._

_She can't explain why she couldn't say 'yes' to him, because god, she loved -_ loves - _him so much, but… she couldn't. The word just wouldn't come._

_And he deserves so much better than that. He deserves so much better than_ her. _He deserves a girl who responds to his heartfelt proposal and his mom's old engagement ring with a tearful, smiling acceptance and who throws her arms around his neck and kisses him soundly and who walks down the aisle to him in a gorgeous white gown a few months later._

_She knows he'll find that. Maybe not today, or maybe not even for a few months or years, but… he's a dream. He'll make someone so incredibly happy someday._

_It just won't be her._

_It'll be the same thing again - his mom's ring in his pocket, her picture in his wallet, and when he goes down on one knee in front of her, that girl won't leave him crestfallen. He'll be happy, and he won't remember Lily and all of her problems._

_The thought of James with someone else sets off another round of sobs, and she hates herself for being upset about that._ She _did this, after all. She doesn't deserve to be sad about this, when the source of the pain is entirely self-inflicted. The heart she's breaking is her own._

_He'll be better without her. She's just not sure she can say the same about herself._

* * *

She breaks eye contact first, looking down at her phone in the cup holder. "I'm really glad you texted me. I'd been trying to build up the nerve to text _you_ for the past week."

He's stunned by that. "You… you had?"

She nods. "But I didn't know if that crossed a line or if… you know, you hated me now."

That's just about the most ridiculous thing he's ever heard. "I could never hate you," he tells her, and he means it.

He tried to. It'd be a hell of a lot easier if he could've found a way to hate her, but…

"I could. Hate me, that is." Her voice is small, fragile.

He takes a deep breath, thinks back to all those speeches he wrote and never gave, and the common thread in all of them. "I never blamed you for what happened between us. We had very different ideas of what our lives were going to look like at that point, and I shouldn't have just… assumed we were on the same page about it."

There's a long silence, and when James glances over at her, Lily's shaking her head, a wry smile on her lips.

"Only you," she says softly. "Any normal person would hate me for what I did, for leaving you down on one knee the way that I did. And yet you… _god_ , James, you're really just _so_ good, you know that?"

He doesn't know what to say to that.

She lets out a long sigh. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I didn't ruin everything."

He looks over at her, and she's staring straight ahead, her hands shaking as they grip and release the steering wheel over and over again. He gets the feeling that she's not done speaking, so he just lets her keep going.

"I mean, yes, we were young, and I wasn't ready for that step, and nothing would've changed that so I don't even know _how_ I could've done things differently, but… I feel like we were a masterpiece and I tore it all up. But I loved you - I think maybe I've never stopped loving you - and I wish more than anything that I could've found a way for that to be enough."

She sniffles, and James suddenly notices the tears streaking her cheeks. He instinctively wants to reach out and wipe them away, but he's not sure that's appropriate behavior right now.

Hell, he's not sure there _is_ any sort of appropriate behavior right now, any sort of guidebook for how to handle a conversation about your failed proposal with the recipient of that proposal - he feels like he's in entirely uncharted territory at this point, and he doesn't know what rules apply.

But she… she might still love him. And that's not nothing.

He weighs his words carefully before answering her. "Maybe you did tear us up, but so did I. We can call it even, I think. And there's… I don't think it's impossible to patch up that tapestry that you shred. That _we_ shred. I mean, we're here right now, aren't we?"

She swipes at her cheeks with the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

"I - I don't," she stammers. "What are you saying?"

"I honestly don't fully know what I'm saying," he replies. "But I'll be here for another two weeks, and so will you, and we live so close to each other now, so maybe we can… I don't know. Maybe we _have_ changed and grown up, and maybe we _are_ totally different people than we were back then, but maybe - maybe that doesn't have to be a bad thing. Maybe it just means we have the potential to be even better now."

And then, the final line of every single speech he's written, the one thing that's never changed, even after six years: "I just know I never stopped loving you either."

"James, I - "

When it becomes evident that she's not going to say anything after that, he keeps going. "I'm not saying we need to pick up where we left off or anything like that, but…"

"You deserve better than me." She sounds more confident in that than in anything else she's said all night.

"I don't _want_ better than you," he replies, just as firmly. "Hell, I don't even think that's a real thing, because in six years I haven't found anything even remotely close."

"Your friends hate me."

"Fuck what any of them think," he says, with more fire in his voice than he intended for there to be. "But honestly, I think they probably miss you too. They've all got this misplaced desire to protect me in their heads, but… you were just as much a part of that group as I was."

"You could find - "

He cuts her off. "Evans, if you never want to see me again after tonight, just say that. But if you're making up excuses for me because of some misguided hero complex that has you convinced that I'd be better off without you, then you can cut that bullshit right now. My heart has always only ever belonged to you. You can break it, you can leave it out in the cold, you can do whatever you want with it, that's up to you, but that's never going to change the fact that it's yours."

She looks at him, her lips falling into a perfect 'o,' like she can't believe what he's just said. Truthfully, he can't believe he's just said it either.

He meant every single word of it, but he certainly hadn't expected to say it _out loud_. That wasn't in _any_ of his speeches.

Just behind her, he can see that the snowfall has begun in earnest outside, and he lets himself get distracted by that instead of by how long Lily's been silent.

"I can't promise anything."

There's something in her voice that tells him she's finally listening to him, finally believing him. Even though her words are cautious, she's making a leap.

"I don't want you to. I don't want to push anything on you that you're not ready for - I've learned how that goes and I like to think I'm a little older and wiser now."

She smiles at him - it's soft, but it might as well be a shout to the heavens for as much as it communicates. "I think… I'd like to see where things go. You're right, we've got two weeks and nothing but time, and… 'tis the damn season, I suppose."

" 'Tis the damn season indeed."

He knows this is only the beginning, that they've undoubtedly got a long road ahead of them, if they even get that far, and nothing is guaranteed.

But he has hope. And faith. And maybe something of a Christmas miracle too, given that the scenery around them makes it feel like they're trapped together inside of a snowglobe.

And the way she reaches over and grabs his hand, threading her fingers in between his own, her hand fitting in his just as perfectly as it did when they were eighteen, makes him feel like he's finally coming home again, at long last.

Like everything was always meant to lead him here, to her, in their hometown.


End file.
